Married Single Other

The premise is hardly a new one centering around a group of friends dealing with love, lust and something else beginning with L that I can't quite think of at the moment. I had hoped the series would be similar to ITV's drama jewel Cold Feet which will remain one of my favourite series of all time...

Married, Single, Other isn't the new Cold Feet but it manages to be interesting enough to keep me interested. Perhaps the characters aren't quite as likeable if I were to compare the two side by side but there are good levels of drama and humour to make it an easy watch.

It takes its role as a romantic comedy very seriously often turning a little twee and sickly in places where the romance is sometimes shoved down your throat. The opening sequence was a hair away from having hearts and puppies running through a field full of buttercups and that was a little off putting.

The cast is strong with perhaps Amanda Abbington and Dean Lennox Kelly's characters being the most interesting as I feel I can predict where Lucy Davis' character is going to end up and Ralf Little as "Clint" (an attempt at humour that fell flat) seems to be playing himself.

The series isn't quite the jewel I was hoping for but saying that its unfair the judge something based soley on a first episode where the characters need to be introduced and stories laid down but it shows enough promise to become a success.

Married, Single, Other is more obsessed with matrimony than even Iain Duncan Smith. ITV's new six-part comedy drama asks us to consider which is the most natural state for a grown-up - marriage, being single or living together. It is already hurtling towards the conclusion "none of the above". We refer first to Lillie and Eddie, not only because the actors Lucy Davis and Shaun Dooley make them the far most compelling characters, but because they appear to be content, and have been, so we are told several times, for 16 happily unmarried years.

The only tension in the relationship is Eddie's determination to marry Lillie, a desire that manifests itself in ludicrous romantic gestures on her birthdays, on one of which we join them. "May I refer you to the window?" asks Eddie, opening the curtain on a collage of post-it notes that spell "Will You Marry Me?" Eddie, a blameless paramedic and all round good sort, is a sentimentalist, so soppy you hardly realise that towards the end of the episode he has entered the euthanasia debate on the side of do-not-revive.

He is further goaded toward the altar by the neuroses of his 11-year-old son, who in an embellishment the writer Peter Souter should have thought better of, is a child prodigy and speaks in sitcom clever-clever. Joe (Jack Scanlon) is so anxious that his parents do the proper thing he scripts his father's proposal speeches in a scrapbook. Lillie is having none of it, not merely because she is happily in love as she is (which would have done for me) but because she works at a refuge for battered wives. By the end of last night's opener, rather than book Joe into therapy with her mate Babs, she has relented, however. In the Richard Curtis moment we all feared, she proposes to Eddie at her birthday party.

Among the guests are, of course, Babs who is married to a loser called Dickie, although you might want to abbreviate the name. Dickie, an all-night online gambler, get-rich-quick fantasist and biker, is so broadly written that Dean Lennox Kelly does well to make any sense of him at all in his performance. If only Amanda Abbington could have made us see what he sees in the dreary child shrink she plays. Meanwhile, the inveterate Lothario Clint, played by Ralf Little, has fallen for a blonde model called Abbey, played by Miranda Raison who, natch, is not a bimbo after all but well on to him. Clint: "You have only just met me" Abbey: "I have met you a thousand times before."

Where Souter and his executive producer Andy Harries are going dramatically rather than thematically with all this, I am not sure, and maybe that is a good thing. Souter has mentioned Richard Curtis's name and Andy Harries made Cold Feet, still the gold standard for this kind of post-watershed soap. The programme's titles carry the words "married", "single", "other" with boxes next to them and there is more than an element of box ticking in both the piece's premise and execution. The dialogue needs to unclench and the story needs to be given time to grow organically as the characters, one prays, deepen.

Last night's TV: Married Single Other, ITV1

The spark's just not there.

Last Night's TV: Married Single Other

Yes, it's predictable. Yes, it's a lot like Cold Feet. And Married, Single, Other is also a pleasure to watch, says Tim Dowling.

Last Night's TV - Married Single Other

Will I become an avid follower of Married Single Other? Erm, I'm not sure yet. I'll have to watch it next week to be sure of the answer to that one because to be fair, one episode was not a very long time to introduce all those characters and to make me want to know how it all goes for them.

Married Single Other is what you might call a box-ticker. Feisty women - check. Feckless blokes - check. Clever kid who outsmarts parents - check. The trouble is, there wasn't a single character I could relate to - and when it comes to bonding with a drama, that's a pretty important box to miss.

That's not to say Peter Souter's romantic comedy drama, a stub-toed version of the over-rated Cold Feet, is not without its diverting moments. Souter used to work in advertising and that shines through in the script. Foxy and intelligent model Abbey tells mildly sleazy Clint: 'I'll be running a credit check - to see if anyone gives you any,' when she agrees to give him the benefit of the doubt and meet his female mates. A smart line for sure but about as believable as Abbey giving Clint the time of day. She wasn't just out of his league, they weren't even playing the same game.

So in Married Single Other we're in a strange kind of down-at-heel fantasy land, where all the women are sorted and strong and all the men are suffering varying degrees of arrested development. They're either doormats or dopes or an irksome combination of the two. Pick your male role model from bed-hopping ad lad Clint, randy dotcom dreamer Dickie and sweet-but-needs-to-grow-abackbone paramedic Eddie. Not exactly spoilt for choice there.

Which left no other option but to cheer for Lillie (a suitably spiky Lucy Davis), Eddie's long-term partner, mother of two kids and a strong character firmly opposed to the notion of marriage. Then she went and spoilt it all by caving in to the pressure to get hitched, but not because of partner Eddie, who'd been proposing every year on her birthday for 15 years. No, it was a proposal speech written by her young son which melted her mean, stony heart and saw her chuck her principles out of the window. It had the strong whiff of male wish-fulfilment about it, a box that gets ticked far too much on TV as it is.

This excruciating six-part "romantic comedy drama" lurches from the self-consciously contrived to the hideously mawkish. It revolves around three couples of the sort who only ever appear in bad television dramas. One couple (Amanda Abbington and Dean Lennox Kelly) is unhappily married because the husband is loveable but feckless. Another pair (Lucy Davis and Shaun Dooley) have been in love for ever, but she won't marry him because of what she sees every day at her work in a women's refuge. And the third couple is a smooth advertising type and his model girlfriend (Ralf Little and Miranda Raison). The actors have all been chosen because of their abundance of charm, but nothing they can do will redeem this facile rubbish.

The fey music and cutesy title sequence are irresistible reminders of Cold Feet, the fondly remembered and influential series centred on the turbulent lives of a group of 30-something friends. Married Single Other is similar, but with softer edges that belie its gritty, northern housing estate setting. So it's a lightish drama with dark corners; the friends are fast-talking and there are shafts of humour; the designated funny guy is Ralf Little as Clint, a boozing, birding lad-about-town who falls for a comely, leather-clad motorbike-demo model (Spooks's Miranda Raison). Just when you think Married Single Other is a bit of froth, it goes all serious when Lillie (Lucy Davis) gets on the wrong side of an angry husband at the women's refuge where she works. And just to wrong-foot you once more, it then reveals a sentimental streak about 15 miles wide. So it's an odd mix, but likeable, even though Peter Souter's script doesn't offer many surprises and you may think you've seen it all before.

It says "new romantic comedy" here, but there's not much evidence that anyone remembered the jokes. The six-parter explores the lives and relationships of three couples, and while everyone is a well-defined character on paper, it's all a bit bland on the screen. Babs is married to a lovable but useless hubby and she's thinking of leaving him. Clint is single, king of the one-night stand, but he falls for the one girl who plays hard to get. Eddie has been together with Issy for years but she refuses to marry him. And, as always, there's a kid wise beyond his years.

Can Married Single Other restore ITV's drama reputation

It has much in common with Cold Feet, Sex and the City et al - and ITV will hope Single Married Other mirrors their success.